Receptive Multilingualism from the Outside: Challenges and Strategies for Teaching Mainland Scandinavian Mutual Intelligibility to French-speaking Learners

Abstract

This article examines receptive multilingualism from an external perspective, focusing on the mutual intelligibility of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish when teaching French-speaking learners. Challenging the assumption that Scandinavian mutual intelligibility is inherently accessible, the study highlights difficulties arising in a foreign academic context shaped by a monolingual tradition. Drawing on qualitative data from a year-long university course, it analyses students’ receptive development and metalinguistic awareness. Results show an initial focus on linguistic distance and variation that is gradually replaced by adaptive decoding strategies through systematic exposure, comparative tasks, and reflexive practice. The study argues for a pedagogy of receptive multilingualism tailored to secondary speech communities.